Slow Cooker Sweet Asian Glazed Pork (Chops or Sandwiches)

This post brought to you by Walmart, although I actually purchased the Bella® Linea slow cooker featured in this post with my own money. It was not provided to me for this post but I liked the features so much that I bought one. All opinions are 100% mine. I LOVE slow cookers. When you are a busy mom and never home in time to make dinner, slow cookers are a life saver. The ability to take a slab of semi-frozen chops out of the freezer, add a few additional ingredients and then come home to dinner is phenomenal! I have posted multiple slow cooker recipes here including soups and entrees, and I am a huge fan of pork in the slow cooker. It gets so tender and juicy when roasted at low temperatures for a long time, a result that is hard to duplicate in the oven.Today’s recipe is no exception. I was delighted with how well this came out. The meat was so soft and tender which a hint of garlic and ginger along with sweet and salty notes.Since my kids don’t like to eat pork chops as much as they like sandwiches, the beauty is that you can also pull the meat apart and serve it “bar-ba-que” style on buns with the glaze poured over it:I scaled this recipe back and only used 2 butterflied chops, which was plenty for our family, although there would have been enough sauce for even 3 or 4 chops. If you want to make more than that, the recipe doubles without any trouble. In the past I have always had to make larger recipes because I used a big 7 quart slow cooker with very limited functionality. It got the job done, but it required me to scale up the recipe or add additional liquid so my recipe wouldn’t dry out. I have wanted to ‘down size’ to a more user friendly size for quite a while, so when Walmart asked me to look at their Bella® Linea line of kitchen appliances and I saw it included a 5 quart slow cooker I jumped at the chance:

The BELLA Linea Collection is exclusively available at Walmart and features modern styling and wonderful color choices. The reason I specifically decided to purchase their 5 quart slow cooker was:1. It was fully programable (with both high and low settings), it defaults to ‘warm’ when the timer goes off which is great if you aren’t sure exactly when you want to eat. Plus it actually counts down on the clock on the outside so you know how much time is left. I had no idea how much time was left on my old one.2. It has a locking lid and a gasket seal (my old crock pot just has a heavy glass lid; the difference was amazing!) Plus you can travel with it and the lid won’t fall off or anything will spill (perfect for when I bring my Queso Dip to the summer pot lucks!) 3. It is DISHWASHER SAFE (the insert obviously)!! My old stone insert was not. That sucker would sit in the sink for days.. I am so excited to just throw the big pot in the dishwasher!4. It came in purple! (Who wouldn’t want Pantone’s color of the year on their slow cooker?)The entire collection is available online or at some Walmart stores. I checked online and saw they had them at my local store, so my 4 year old and I ran out to pick one up. Here she is trying to get the purple one (love how she is sticking out her tongue!) Now that we have our slow cooker picked out, it is time to COOK!!

I’m want to share a quick side tip for using and storing fresh ginger. I NEVER have fresh ginger on hand, but i like it much more than powdered. To avoid a trip to the store, I keep a large piece of UNPEELED ginger in a zip-top bag in the freezer. When you need fresh grated ginger, peel one end and grate it (while still frozen):It grates so nicely (it doesn’t get all stringy like when it is room temperature) and when you have enough, just pop the rest of it back into the freezer until you need it again.

Once you have all your ingredients, place your chops in the bottom of your slow cooker. You can add salt and pepper to the chops if you wish. I didn’t because the soy sauce was already salty.In a separate bowl combine all the other ingredients and whisk together:Pour that over the pork and cook on high for 2 hours followed by low for 2-4 more hours (until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees.)Alternatively you could just cook on low for 6-8 hours if you have more time.Here is what they looked like after cooking and the sauce had cooked down into a syrup-like glaze:I served them with mashed potatoes and green beans, although they would be FABULOUS over rice with some steamed veggies. They do have an Asian flavor. I didn’t want to lose all that fabulous sauce so I added a little cornstarch slurry (1 tsp cornstarch with a few tablespoons of water) to thicken it up and added it the sandwiches I made by pulling the meat apart and adding it to a roll:And of course, I poured it over the chops:I thought they were fabulous, and I can't wait to see what else I can whip up with my new slow cooker.

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